Page 85 of Hers To Command
That was Giselle.
“I will stay.” Wonderful, beautiful, courageous Mathilde, his angel. With an arrow in her back.
And yet…If she was not dead, perhaps not even seriously wounded…Oh, God, could it be? He tried again to speak and to open his heavy eyelids.
“We shall leave, then, until such time—”
Nicholas? God’s wounds, that had to be Nicholas. That Scot had not been lying.
“Mathilde?” he finally managed to gasp. He got his eyes open, and the first thing he saw was Mathilde’s wonderful, worried face.
She was sitting beside his bed. It was her hand that held his and he squeezed it with all the strength he could muster as she smiled down at him. She didn’t look hurt or ill. She looked overjoyed, enraptured. Delightful and delighted. As bold and vivacious as ever. “I thought…”
He started to cough, and she quickly lifted him up and held a goblet of some kind of liquid to his throat. It tasted terrible, but it was soothing for all that.
He lay back, panting, still holding his lover’s hand. God help him, he never wanted to let her go.
Two other people came into view behind her: his brother and Merrick. He had only seen his brother look so worried once before, when it was a matter concerning his beloved wife. As usual, Merrick’s face betrayed almost nothing, and had Henry not known him well, he would have thought him completely unmoved. But he did know Merrick well, enough to catch the slight downturn of his lips that betrayed anxiety.
Both men glanced across the bed and he realized Giselle was on the other side. “How are you feeling, Henry?” she asked softly.
“Better,” he managed to say, again squeezing Mathilde’s hand and trying to smile at her despite his aching cheek. “I thought you…the arrow…?”
“If I had not been wearing mail and a gambeson—which I must say is very heavy and I can understand now why the men grumbled so when you made them run in such things—I might not be alive now,” she replied. “But I was, so the tip of the arrow did not go deep.” She flushed, looking prettier than ever. “I fear, my love, that I fainted, like the weakest woman in the kingdom.”
“The bravest woman,” he assured her, silently sending another grateful prayer to God for sparing his beloved. “You shouldn’t have—”
“I was afraid you would do exactly what you did.” She frowned, although her dancing eyes belied any anger. “And after you promised me you would not fight.”
“He always was an unthinking, overly courageous fool,” Nicholas noted. Henry cut his eyes to his brother, and had one of the great shocks of his life when he realized Nicholas was smiling.
“I always thought it would either be the death of him, or the making of him. Fortunately, it looks as if he’s shown me he’s a brother I should be very proud of, and I am.”
Henry closed his eyes, lest his suddenly tear-filled eyes betray his weakness. Either he was more hurt than he guessed, or perhaps it was the medicine he’d been given….
Damn him, why not admit the truth, at least to himself? He was thrilled to hear his brother’s words. He’d waited all his life to hear Nicholas praise him.
“And he will do what he thinks right, although it costs him dear,” Merrick added. “Other men might think twice about interfering in other people’s business after the way I beat him when he interfered in mine.”
“Thank God he did not think twice about helping us,” Mathilde said, as bold and insolent as ever, “and you should be ashamed of what you did to him.”
“Mathilde!” Henry croaked.
“Well, it is true, and if you had not interfered, as he puts it, Giselle and I and everyone in Ecclesford would be under Roald’s thumb.”
“I do believe this lady cares a great deal for my brother,” Nicholas said coolly to Merrick. “We should bear that in mind when she upbraids us.”
Henry’s gaze darted to Mathilde. Had she dared to upbraid Nicholas, who did not take criticism at all well?
Mathilde caught his wary look, but didn’t appear the least bit nonplused. “I told your brother he should have ensured that you were in the employ of a lord capable of rewarding you as you deserve, instead of making you travel about like some sort of minstrel.”
God’s blood, she would, too. Was there a more amazing woman in the world?
Yet he must lose her.
This must be God’s idea of punishment for his vanity and past sins, to have him finally find a woman he truly loved, then disfigure him and make him useless.
“According to her, I’ve been most remiss in my brotherly duty and ought to be thoroughly ashamed of myself,” Nicholas remarked, and to Henry’s further shock, it seemed Nicholas wasn’t angry but amused. “When you are well, Henry, I shall have to remedy the situation, or I fear this lady’s wrath will descend upon me.”
